


A lifetime of something

by another_Hero



Series: Ace Debbie Not Lou [1]
Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: F/F, but they are going to talk about love a lot idk it's some corny shit tbh, communication porn, it's queerplatonic nobody is gonna bone here, not really actually but they do ok, obviously, queerplatonic, the ending is happy tho, there's a lot of ace angst here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 04:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: Debbie and Lou have a lot of feelings, but they...aren't exactly the same feelings[Formerly bonus unanticipated chapter 3 has been deleted from here and made into its own fic]





	1. Chapter 1

“Louise Arabella Miller.”

Debbie preferred to use three names when she wanted to be really emphatic, and since Lou didn’t have a middle name, Debbie made one up anytime she wanted to get a little more over the top. She felt that Arabella was a particularly inspired choice. She had called it from her bedroom, but now she went out to throw the hat down to her. She’d just found it in a drawer, and a part of her couldn’t believe that Lou had kept the thing, and a part of her couldn’t believe that _she_ had kept the thing. She’d been a little blindsided by it, and she wanted Lou to answer for herself.

The hat fell short of Lou downstairs on the couch, but she recognized it once it landed, without getting up. She looked up at Debbie, who came down the stairs, retrieved the hat from the floor, and said, “Really?”

“Hey,” said Lou, “you’re the one who saved it. I just moved it over. I didn’t realize you were so sentimental.”

Debbie raised her eyebrows.

“Okay, I knew you were sentimental.”

Debbie didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry, what are we talking about?”

Debbie just glanced at the hat. “I thought you might want it back.”

Lou rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t think that.” Lou had given her the beanie the first time they met, at a party in October, enough years ago that Lou had worn beanies then. Debbie had noticed Lou picking pockets, of course, and she’d waited until Lou came to her before intercepting her. They’d lifted a bottle of tequila and walked around for the evening, and when the snow started, Lou had offered Debbie her hat. She’d assumed she’d lost it in some move sometime. She certainly hadn’t expected Lou to bring it here. “You recognized it, though.”

“It was my favorite,” said Lou.

“Oh?”

“You didn’t know? That’s why I gave it to you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does. I knew I was drunk, but I also knew I’d recognize the hat when I saw it again.”

Debbie snorted.

“Hey, it worked.”

“That’s…revisionist history.”

Lou shrugged. “It’s not how we got together again. But the next day I knew you were important because I’d given away my hat.”

She said it as glibly as everything else, but Debbie was caught off guard: Lou had never mentioned that this hat was anything much. What she knew of herself and her own life had just been rewritten, somewhere very basic. “I didn’t know.”

“I don’t think I told you.” She chuckled. “It wasn’t really the image I was going for.”

“What’s that?”

“Giving a fuck.” She went into the kitchen. “You want some tea?”

“Aw, a whole fuck for me?”

“Oh, come on, you’ve amassed a good stockpile of them by now.”

“Of…fucks?” said Debbie, ignoring the warmth she felt all the way out to her shoulders. “This joke doesn’t make sense anymore. Let’s lose it.”

Lou made a cheers gesture with the kettle.

But Debbie didn’t want to end the conversation just yet. “What I remember,” she said, “is waking up and, you know, there’s the pile of clothes on the floor in the corner, and this hat was there, and I looked all over it in case there was some note on it about who you were.”

Lou turned around, leaning against the counter like some motherfucker in a criminal underworld magazine. She had her tongue pressed into the side of her mouth like she was shaking her head. “That’s adorable,” she said.

“You had good form,” said Debbie. “I wanted to know you.” It sounded sweeter than she’d meant it; she decided not to walk it back.

Lou nodded. “I remember thinking, you were so clear about yourself, but so interested in everything else.” She shrugged. “I loved you right away.” She turned back to the counter, though the water couldn’t be boiling yet.

Debbie’s immediate instinct was to respond to Lou’s assessment of her then, but that wouldn’t really have been helpful or fair, and she didn’t want to get into a debate about what she was like, and she couldn’t help wondering how long they could actually manage a conversation like this. She leaned on the counter so she could at least see the side of Lou’s face while she busied herself with preparing the teapot for when the water was ready. “I think for me,” she said, “it was when you broke in my window to make sure I was _safe_.” After all, what could have made Debbie feel safer than knowing people could and would break in her window? But Lou had looked so triumphant, and Debbie had wanted nothing more than for her to never leave.

Lou was standing closer now, and she was facing Debbie. “In retrospect,” she said, “maybe not my smoothest move.” But they both knew they had inhabited each other’s lives more easily after that.

“Twenty seconds of terror,” said Debbie, “a lifetime of…something.”

Lou grinned, and she was closer again, and _fuck_ leaning in until Debbie had to step back.

“I—” she said, but that was it.

“Oh. Sorry. I should have—”

“It’s okay.”

Lou nodded but wouldn’t meet her eye. Turned to the counter, sighed.

“Hey,” said Debbie.

Lou looked up, with a face like she wished she didn’t have to.

“I’m sorry too.”

Lou nodded, looked down, shook her head, and turned to walk up the stairs. The kettle started to screech right as she left. “Can you turn that off?” she said, and Debbie took in a breath—Lou wouldn’t even come back down to turn off the stove—and she flipped the top open, and she poured the water into the pot. By the time she looked back, Lou’s bedroom door had closed silently. While she waited for it to steep, she took off her sweater, threw it across the room, and took a bowl out of the sink. If you cried while you washed the dishes, she figured, it didn’t count; it just washed down the drain.

She didn’t cry. The muscles in her belly contracted involuntarily. She wanted to sit silently next to Lou. She wanted to carry up a cup of tea like she wasn’t the reason Lou had closed her door. She wanted to be allowed to wrap around her, envelop her. She thought she could, on the one hand. Lou was never shy with Debbie’s body. But this would be the most unwelcome time. So she stayed put, ignoring how she wanted to rub her hands from Lou’s shoulders down and up her arms, then her back. She wanted—she tried out the proposition in her head, tried to imagine how it would feel—she wanted to kiss her. But no, she couldn’t summon anything like the same longing for that. She'd hoped that after all this time she might be able to make an exception for Lou, but no luck. The muscles of her belly tugged together again at the _fuck_ re-re-realization that she couldn’t just want what was simplest. She finished the handful of dishes in the sink. She wanted to go somewhere, but she didn’t want Lou to hear her leave and think any of the things Lou might think if she heard Debbie leave, so she kept walking from point to point in the kitchen, trying to think of what to do. She decided the tea had probably steeped enough and took the ball out of the pot and poured a mug of it, just one. She held it in front of her and inhaled the steam and stopped moving. Suddenly she was exhausted. She crossed the room, set the tea on the coffee table, lay down on the couch, pressed her face into where the pillow met the back cushion, and felt the muscles in her belly pull towards each other, again, like a corset. She didn’t cry, and she felt guilty about that, too, like if she did she could have shown her red face to Lou as proof. Her breathing did get shaky, for a little while, and then smooth again, and then she fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

She woke to the feeling of a blanket landing on her, and then a hand smoothed the end of it, and then she tried very hard to feel grateful for that instead of guilty. She rolled over; she certainly wasn’t going to pretend to sleep.

“Oh,” said Lou, “I didn’t mean to wake you.” She did look concerned.

Debbie sat up to look at her straight-on, and to reassure her. “No problem,” she said. Lou knew she didn’t like napping. She saw the mug on the table and reached for it out of habit, but it was colder than her hands.

“I’m going to get groceries. Need anything?”

“Ice cream,” said Debbie.

“Rocky road?”

“Yeah. Hey, also can you get some of those swirly cookies?” She mimed a helix with her finger.

“The ones with the hazelnut inside?”

“But like, mostly chocolate?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. And some TimTams.”

“Should I just buy out the cookie aisle?”

“Nah, not the un-frosted animal cookies. Everything else, though.” Her aim for brightness had fallen short. “Also we’re out of grilled cheese cheese.”

“It’s already on my list.”

Another day, Debbie would have said something like “You’re my dream girl,” but today she said, “Thanks.”

Then Lou was gone, and Lou would be coming back. Debbie thought of sitting right where she was on this couch behind Lou, leaning against her back or letting Lou lean down against her chest. It wouldn’t happen tonight, but they would get back to it in time. She considered sliding her hands down Lou’s belly, under her waistband, ignoring the logistics of clothes and angles, into warmth and wet and well, it might be okay, but it wouldn’t be an improvement. She switched their places in the plan, considered Lou, imagined her flawlessly attentive and still no, fuck, she couldn’t just talk herself into it. She’d have given back everything she ever stole to want what Lou wanted; she’d have returned it with interest to make Lou satisfied with how she was. But she couldn’t fix her feelings, and she sure as hell couldn’t fix Lou’s, and in the meantime apparently they were just going to pretend until they convinced themselves. They would both act like it was less than it was because that was easier than confronting the magnitude of each other. The door opened. Fuck. Lou had bought groceries and she hadn’t even moved.

But Lou didn’t make a joke about it, which meant that if they were pretending, they weren’t pretending very well. What Lou did do was bring her a bowl of rocky road ice cream, and Debbie looked at it and couldn’t believe Lou was taking care of her. “Thanks,” she said, and it sounded like she’d forgotten to actually say it. She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”

Lou shrugged and didn’t ask what was wrong with Debbie’s face, even though she was sure she looked unreasonably distressed by the ice cream. She felt more than a little rude, too, eating it while Lou put away the groceries, but she didn’t know what would happen if she went over there in the kitchen with Lou. She wanted to know. She carried the ice cream with her; besides that she wanted to eat it, she knew better than to reject a peace offering. She set the ice cream on the stove and perched on the counter and picked the ice cream up again. Each time Lou, pulling things out of the bag, came to a box or tin of cookies, she set them in front of Debbie without looking at her. Debbie had the momentary, ungracious thought that Lou was acting like a cat, delivering her gifts. Under other circumstances, Lou would have been making fun of her, stacking up all the cookies without comment, but she seemed to be just going through the motions of the joke just now. She slid back on the counter to pull her knees up in front of her. Lou looked up at her, turned her head. She didn’t say “shit,” but it sure looked like she did. What a fucking waste of time, Debbie thought, for both of them to feel guilty. She leaned on the wall and took a bite of ice cream. She tried to figure out how to say it. She started as blasé as she could; she certainly wasn't trying to make Lou sadder.

“Well, this is a terrible use of time,” she said.

Lou looked around at the groceries. “I can see how much more efficient it would be to leave them on the counter.”

Debbie rolled her eyes.

“Both of us feeling guilty at once,” she said. “We really ought to be able to delegate that.”

Lou gave a mirthless chuckle. “Happy to take your guilt off your hands,” she said.

“I mean, it’s completely irrational,” she said. “You drew a pretty reasonable conclusion, and I don’t blame you for it, and I’ve never liked kissing, and that kind of stuff, and God knows I’m over feeling bad about that.”

It had the desired effect, which was a look of confusion from Lou that she quickly smoothed into sharpness. “You kiss people. You fuck people. What are you talking about?”

“Do you mean Claude?”

Lou stared her down.

“You know I can’t treat you like I treated Claude.”

“That’s obvious.” Fuck. She was going to get out of this. She was going to get them out of this.

“No. Stop. Jesus. I can’t _lie_ to you like I did to him.”

Lou didn’t speak.

“For one thing, you’d know.”

Lou didn’t laugh.

“It was part of the job,” she said. “Convincing him I…wanted to be there. I wanted to do the job, so. He was a mark.” She chuckled. “It’s not that I hate it, I just don’t really care? With him I just…pretended.”

“Debbie,” said Lou, and she sounded angry, “if you’re trying to make me feel better about this,” and Debbie’s whole chest and shoulders rose two inches, “why the _fuck_ are you using _euphemisms_ for faking it?”

Debbie chuckled, and then she laughed, and Lou’s eyes were twinkling too, but she pulled herself together. She had to say it now or she wouldn't for years. “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “I love you. I don’t want you to leave. And I want to touch you all the time. But like. Your arms. You know? I just don’t….”

Lou nodded. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Debbie’s heart sank. “I know it isn’t want you wanted.”

“It is,” Lou said. “More or less.”

“What does that…?”

Lou shrugged. Looked around her. She looked exhausted, and Debbie felt responsible, but no, they had done that together. They weren’t far apart in the kitchen, but they weren’t exactly near.

Debbie slid her legs down so her knees dangled off the counter again, and she set her bowl on the cold stove. Lou stepped toward her and put her hands on Debbie’s knees like that was the only way to know where she was. Debbie waited her out. But Lou didn’t say anything; instead she pulled Debbie’s knees apart and let herself in between them, and she tugged on Debbie’s hips to bring her forward on the counter, and she leaned against her.

Debbie felt like she was glowing, like you could probably have seen her from space. She set her hands on Lou’s shoulder and ran them down and up Lou’s arms, then her back, then her back, then her back, before resting them near her elbows. She debated pulling Lou's arms around her waist so she could hold her without feeling like a straitjacket, but she stayed where she was. Eventually Lou lifted her hands up to rest on Debbie's thighs again, flitting around for a few moments like Lou wasn't quite sure where to leave them. As Lou moved her arms, Debbie's hands slid down to Lou's, and she calmed them in one place.

“So no kissing. No sex?” Lou said.

Debbie didn’t answer. Lou didn’t sound upset, but Debbie wasn’t sure what she wanted.

“How do you feel about—shit, I don’t know. Holding hands? I don’t think I like holding hands.”

Debbie chuckled, but it shook Lou’s head, so she stopped. “We don’t have to hold hands.” She didn't move her hands now from where they rested on Lou's.

“What about sleeping together, like, asleep?” Lou’s voice, when she said it, was quiet.

“Doesn’t make sense to me,” Debbie said, and it was the truth, but she hastened to add, “but I can try.”

“What do you want, then?”

Debbie brought one hand up to Lou’s hair. “You think I ever cuddled anyone else in the fucking kitchen after I made them sad?”

Lou laughed properly at that, enough to stand up. “I can just see you,” she said, and she was looking at Debbie full-on now.

“I don’t need anything different,” said Debbie. “I just wanted you to know.”

Lou nodded. She poured out the abandoned pot of tea. “Jesus,” she said. “I’m ready to sleep for a week.”

“I think I need to go for a walk,” Debbie said.

“A walk.” Lou nodded again. “Can I come?”

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to say this is the most self-indulgent ace thing I've ever done but honestly my life is full of the doing of self-indulgent ace things so it absolutely isn't. If I remember, I'll reply to every comment with the story of one self-indulgent ace thing I have done in my life. I'm not that worried about running out.


End file.
